Leicester Secular Hall is a Grade II Listed Building built in 1881 for Leicester Secular Society

Leicester Secular Society

Leicester Secular Society is the world's oldest Secular Society. It meets at its headquarters, the Leicester Secular Hall in the centre of Leicester, England, at 75 Humberstone Gate.-Founding of the Society:...

 by The Leicester Secular Hall Co. Ltd, all the shareholders of which were Secularists, led by Josiah Gimson a Leicester engineer and councillor who held the largest number of shares. Ownership of the Hall subsequently passed to the Leicester Rationalist Trust. The building is located in the centre of Leicester

Leicester

Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

 at 75 Humberstone Gate. It was designed by W Larner Sugden of Leek

Leek, Staffordshire

Leek is a market town in the county of Staffordshire, England, on the River Churnet. It is an ancient borough and was granted its royal charter in 1214.It is the administrative centre for the Staffordshire Moorlands District Council...

. The frontage contains five busts depicting, in chronological order, Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

, Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

, Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

, Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...

, and Robert Owen

Robert Owen

Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...

.

History

The building of the hall was proposed in 1872 after G. J. Holyoake was refused the use of a public room for a lecture. George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 and William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

are among the many radical thinkers who have spoken there.

Current plans

There are ambitious plans in 2007, with assistance from heritage grants, to refurbish the building to meet modern standards including disabled access to the upper floors.